Linda Millett lay in a coma at Boston Medical Center for about a month after the accident. Her ankles, her legs, her hips were all broken. She had too many fractures to even count. Her brain was so swollen doctors couldn’t even lie her down to do surgery.

“It would have to be a miracle itself, a pure miracle for her to come back,” Linda’s mother, Sandra Millett, 53, said at the time. “She just got hit too hard.”

People around Middleboro, fearing the worst, kept silent.

“Sandy, we were afraid to ask,” they’d tell her mom later.

“She made it,” she tells them now, with a smile.

Four months and two rehabilitation clinics later, Linda Millett was home, walking and talking. Today, she continues to make strides in what can only be described as a “miracle” recovery.

Millett, 31, who lay unable to speak or even breathe on her own for weeks, can now cook for herself and dress herself. She brushes her own teeth and converses in soft, steady sentences.

But as her body works to recover physically – she walks with a walker and still struggles to bend over to tie her shoes – mentally, things are still a bit hazy.

“It seems like it was months and months ago. It doesn’t make any sense,” Linda said in a recent interview at her home, still trying to put everything together.

Millett suffered some brain damage from the crash, her mother says. It’s too soon to tell how much.

“She’s not 100 percent. She may seem it to other people,” she said, “but I’m her mother. I know.”

At about 6:30 p.m. on July 4, 2012, Millett was coming back from a holiday barbeque – so she’s told, though the Middleboro mom remembers nothing from that day, or from about a month before it happened.

Her boyfriend, Chris Backman was behind the wheel and her 5-year-old son, Evan Tyler, in the backseat, when a pickup rounded the corner on Route 105 at the I-495 overpass driving 87 mph in the wrong lane, police said.

The crash killed both drivers – Backman, 47, of Middleboro, and 27-year-old Patrick Adams, of Plympton, who police say caused the crash.

A good Samaritan, before crews arrived on scene, helped rescue Evan, now 6, who hung in his car seat upside down. Millett was airlifted to Boston in critical condition.

After stints at Boston Spaulding and Cambridge Spaulding, Millett is now home, attending the Blue Hills Sports & Spine Rehabilitation center in Plymouth three times a week. Her goal: to fully transition from a walker to a cane by May.

It’s her left knee that hurts the most.

She calculates the pain as a 5 on a scale of 1-10, because with little memory, she has nothing to compare it too. But she thinks past the pain. Her blue eyes literally sparkle when she talks about walking again, and perhaps driving again someday.

Page 2 of 3 - On a recent Wednesday, Flo MacDonald, a Plymouth therapist at Blue Hills, rubs lotion on Millett’s left knee, massaging the tissue underneath to get the blood flowing.

“What we’re looking for here is to get her knee a little straighter and then get her to bend it a little more so that she can transition from a walker to a cane,” MacDonald explains.

Bending that knee is “one of her biggest challenges,” MacDonald says.

The therapist asks her if she’s doing her daily stretches at home. Millett nods with a soft “mmhm.”

MacDonald jokes with her about St. Patrick’s Day and movies she watched while in the hospital. She keeps a smile on her face even though she knows Millett has a long road in front of her.

“She had multiple fractures, so we have limitations for sure,” MacDonald said. “What we’re left with is what we’re left with, and I’m not really sure yet (what to expect).”

There is a purple scar that runs about 4 inches on her left ankle. The scarring to her left knee is more faded; it doesn’t come close to portraying the damage underneath.

MacDonald straps a 2-pound brace around Millett’s ankle and coaches her to raise her leg 45 degrees into the air; repeat.

She turns her on her side and asks her to raise her leg again, working to build muscle.

“Awesome,” she tells her.

“That was a struggle when she first came in,” she said.

Millett doesn’t complain about the pain, but with upturned lips looks to MacDonald and says with each rep: “Is it OK to stop this now?”

On her mind, as she lays down on the table, is the tens of thousands of dollars – maybe more – in bills she now faces.

“Just from being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” her mother says.

Following the crash, Sandra had set a trust fund up in her daughter’s name, and in a recent interview, thanked everyone for their contributions, as well as their continued thoughts and prayers as news about the event spread.

Millett’s family may never know whether Adams – the driver in the car who caused the crash – was under the influence at the time, as Middleboro police are refusing to release toxicology reports.

Police said they found hypodermic needles, a metal spoon, often associated with heroin use, pills and an empty nip of alcohol scattered at the scene.

The family now is trying to move on, to forget the crash.

Meanwhile, Millett is trying to remember the good things. She still doesn’t remember saying ‘I love you’ to Backman, her boyfriend of two years. But she knows they were in love from past text messages.

Page 3 of 3 - Most of all, she looks forward to caring for her son again – taking him to the playground and the library like she always did.

“They just can’t play roughhouse for a while,” Sandra says with a smile.

On top of everything that has happened – the crash, the cost of it all – Sandra and Linda are locked in a custody battle fighting to get Evan back from his father in New Hampshire.

“They were like glue,” Sandra said, of Linda and Evan. “No matter where she went, she took him.”

That, more than any amount of physical therapy, is what will help Linda heal, her mother said.